One type of conventional fishing rod is provided at its rod body with a reel mounting device and a grip, with a plurality of fishing line guides located forwardly of the grip on the rod.
When fishing with this kind of rod, a reel is mounted on the reel mounting device and a fishing line wound onto a spool of the reel is guided to the tip portion of the rod through the line guides and is cast by an angler swinging the rod. When a fish is hooked, the angler grasps the grip located forwardly of the reel mounting device with one of his hands while returning the reel handle with his other hand to wind the fishing line onto the spool. In this manner, the fish is brought in.
When fishing with the conventional type of rod constructed as described above, the angler grasps the grip (located forwardly of the reel mounting device of the rod as described above) and draws up the rod to cause the fish to come to him. If the fish pulls the fishing line strongly to thereby cause the line to be drawn out from the spool, a so-called thumbing procedure is often required to control the drawing-out of the line. Thumbing is done such that the angler puts his finger to the spool onto which the line is being wound, and controls the pressure applied with his finger to brake the rotation of the spool. When the conventional type of rod is used, the angler grasps the grip with one of his hands while gripping the reel handle with his other hand, so that a problem arises in that the angler cannot perform the thumbing operation. As a result, when the line is drawn out from the spool due to a stronger pull of the hooked fish, the fishing line is merely drawn out from the spool without being controlled via braking action, resulting in that the hooked fish is able to escape and hide behind rocks in the sea, i.e., a favorable fishing-up operation of the fish cannot be carried out.